Jean Muenchrath wrote down her story to heal herself from the trauma of a life-threatening mountaineering accident, an epic survival incident, and decades of chronic pain. She then published her memoir to inspire readers to follow their dreams and to encourage them to overcome whatever challenges their life presents. Before she became an author, Muenchrath was a park ranger with the National Park Service for over thirty years. She’s led trekking tours in Nepal and Thailand and worked in Bhutan with the World Wildlife Fund. Jean enjoys traveling to foreign lands, exploring wild places and sitting quietly in meditation.
I wrote
If I Live Until Morning, A True Story of Adventure, Tragedy and Transformation
I like books that expand my horizons and offer meaningful insights about our world, the human condition and how to become our best selves. I loved how The Joy of Living offers a fresh perspective on how to live joyfully in the midst of turmoil. It’s one of the best books I’ve found geared to Westerners on how to meditate effectively and how to make a positive change to one’s life. Through sharing his personal struggles and his journey to overcome them, the author weaves modern day scientific explanations on the science of the mind with the wisdom of ancient Tibetan Buddhism. Readers are given a clear and concise understanding of the power of their own minds.
For millennia, Buddhists have enjoyed the limitless benefits of meditation. But how does it work? And why? The principles behind this ancient practice have long eluded some of the best minds in modern science. Until now.
This groundbreaking work, with a foreword by bestselling author Daniel Goleman, invites us to join in unlocking the secrets behind the practice of meditation. Working with neuroscientists, the author provides clear insights into modern research, which indicates that systematic training in meditation can enhance activity in areas of the brain associated with happiness and compassion.
With an infectious joy and insatiable curiosity, Yongey Mingyur…
This book really resonated with me—I could relate to the author’s struggles, her love for outdoor adventures and traveling through Asian landscapes and cultures. I admired Kate Harris’ tenacity. Her use of language painted pictures of places in my mind and made my emotions merge with hers. This book ignites the inspiration to follow one’s passions. As a female reader, I found it very empowering. Harris’ story takes readers on a modern journey along the silk road. It’s a story of two women’s friendship and their moxie to accomplish their goal of riding bicycles across Central Asia. Together they persevere through countless obstacles—heath issues, corrupt officials and daunting border crossings, to achieve their dream. Their travel challenges are interwoven with insights about how international borders shape the lives of those living on different sides of an often arbitrary line.
"Lands of Lost Borders carried me up into a state of openness and excitement I haven't felt for years. It's a modern classic."-Pico Iyer
A brilliant, fierce writer, and winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize, makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road-an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world.
As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved-to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and…
This book is one of my all time favorite reads. Mount Analogue is a short poetic novel. Daumal’s rich descriptions and symbolism engaged my imagination and made me think deeply about the story’s meaning. The author takes readers on a journey to a mystical place with an unusual set of characters and strange circumstances. The story revolves around an adventurous sailing and climbing expedition to a mystical mountain hidden from the world’s inhabitants which is believed to link the earth to a higher sphere of reality. It’s full of intrigue and packed with pithy philosophical statements worth pondering. Daumal’s words and descriptions are so thought-provoking, that I used a quote from this book as the opening to my memoir, If I Live Until Morning.
This pataphysical journey up a mountain whose "summit must be inaccessible, but its base accessible to human beings" depicts an allegorical landscape akin to Alice in Wonderland
A beloved cult classic of surrealism, pataphysics and Gurdjieffian mysticism, René Daumal’s Mount Analogue is the allegorical tale of an expedition to a mountain whose existence can only be deduced, not observed. As its numerous editions (most now rare) over the decades attest, the book has been highly influential: Alejandro Jodorowsky's visionary 1973 film The Holy Mountain is a loose adaptation of the book, and John Zorn based an eponymous album on it.…
I read this book after my near-fatal accident in the mountains. The story gave me perspective about enduring hardship. It also rekindled my own adventurous ambitions. This is a gripping tale about Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the South Pole in the early 1900’s. Shackleton and his crew were trapped in sea ice before making a harrowing escape in their small lifeboats across frigid and turbulent seas to the shores of South Georgia Island. Later, he and a small group of men traversed glacier-covered mountains to get help at a remote whaling station. Shackleton’s feat of keeping his crew alive for months on end, with few supplies and in horrific conditions, is both an inspiration and a testimony to the leadership of a remarkable man. This timeless tale is a must-read for those who love adventure and history.
In August 1914, polar explorer Ernest Shackleton boarded the Endurance and set sail for Antarctica, where he planned to cross the last uncharted continent on foot. In January 1915, after battling its way through a thousand miles of pack ice and only a day's sail short of its destination, the Endurance became locked in an island of ice. Thus began the legendary ordeal of Shackleton and his crew of twenty-seven men. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted northwest before it was finally crushed between two ice floes. With no options left, Shackleton and a skeleton crew attempted a near-impossible…
I have given this book as a gift to friends and acquaintances who were struggling with health issues, trauma, depression, anxiety, or loss. Recipients of this book have told me how much it has benefited them—they found peace and renewed energy on their path of healing physical and emotional pain. It’s a short book packed with easy-to-practice meditations that are simple, yet profound. It is suitable for reader’s of all backgrounds and belief systems.
The true nature of our minds is enlightened and peaceful, as the depth of the ocean is calm and clear. But when we mentally grasp and emotionally cling to our wants and worries with all our energy, we lose our own enlightened freedom and healing power, only to gain stress and exhaustion, suffering and overexcitement, like the turbulent waves rolling on the surface of the ocean.
Our minds possess the power to heal pain and stress, and to blossom into peace and joy, by loosening the clinging attitudes that Buddhists call "grasping at self." If we apply the mind's healing…
After skiing more than 200 miles along California's John Muir Trail, Jean faces death from a mountaineering accident on Mount Whitney. Broken and bleeding on the highest peak in the continental United States, she vows to realize her greatest dreams if she lives until morning. Her escape from the Sierra Nevada Mountains turns into an amazing five-day survival story. Jean's recovery is equally daunting. In this outdoor adventure memoir, her three-decade journey takes her from the depths of despair and chronic pain, to the heights of the Himalayas and on travels around the world. When the specter of Mount Whitney continues to shatter her life, Jean befriends Tibetan lamas. Their ancient wisdom guides her on a path beyond her wildest dreams.
I once saw a play at the renowned Oregon Shakespeare Theatre. A play about Sor Juana. It was a good play, but it felt like something was missing like jalapenos left out of enchiladas. The play kept nudging me to look further to find Sor Juana, and so for the next five years, I did so. I read and read more. I listened for her voice, and that is where I heard her life come alive. This isn’t the only possibility for Sor Juana’s life; it is just the one I heard.
Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, this brilliant 17th century nun flew through Mexico City on the breeze of poetry and philosophy. She met with princes of the Church, and with the royalty of Spain and Mexico. Then she met a stunning, powerful woman with lavender eyes, la Vicereine Maria Louisa, and her life changed forever. As her fame grew, she dared to challenge the diabolical Archbishop once too often, and he threw her in front of the Inquisition, where she stood, alone.
Sor Juana's work is studied still today, and justifiably so. Scholars study her months on end; mystics…
This astonishingly brilliant 17th century poet and dramatist, this nun, flew through Mexico City on wings of inspiration. Having no dowry, she chose the life of a nun so that she might learn, so that she might write, so that she might meet the most fascinating people of the western world. She accomplished all of that, and more.
One day a woman with violet eyes, eyes the color of passion flowers, entered her life. It was the new Vicereine, Maria Luisa. As the two most powerful women in Mexico City, the bond between them crossed politics and wound them in…
